One of the earliest topics that researchers and educators tackled with GIS was natural hazards, because of their multi-disciplinary nature, and because hazards data were readily available in formats easily ingested by GIS software. Fifteen years later, hazards data are more easily used immediately after a hazardous event than ever before.

On 11 October 2009, a landslide in Washington occurred, burying a state highway at least 20 feet deep for one-half mile, diverting a river, and damaging homes in Nile. Later that same week, my colleagues and I used the event in a multi-day GIS workshop for attendees at the Geological Society of America conference not far away, in Portland, Oregon. My colleague georegistered a landslide map from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), I uploaded it to ArcGIS Online, and our class brought the layer package into ArcGIS Explorer to analyze it in 3-D.

An article in the Seattle Times stated that the Washington DNR warned the gravel pit operators four years earlier that the operation might be destabilizing a portion of the slope. However, a Yakima geotechnical engineer, who conducted a slope analysis for the gravel pit operators, said the gravel mine was too small to have triggered the massive slides. We used the event to set up a classroom debate, and spatial analysis and GIS were used as evidence by those on both sides of the debate. After further examination, my colleague, a geologist by training, noticed that landslide scars seemed to be located along the valley to the northwest of the current slide. Did a fault underlie this entire valley, the route of Highway 410? As a class, we visited the Washington DNR web site, downloaded the faults layer, and overlaid it in ArcGIS Explorer, which confirmed our hypothesis about the fault’s existence. I packaged up these layers and saved them to ArcLessons so that you can use them right away.

This simple but effective project illustrates that GIS is perfectly suited to investigate current events and foster inquiry.

--Joseph Kerski, ESRI Education Manager.